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appreciation

“Joey, pull my finger,” my uncle urged me. I’m not quite sure when that flatulence generating joke began, but it is so classic that it must’ve started about the time that man had a finger and an ability to fart. For me it was my seventh Thanksgiving, when my uncle uttered those four magic words. It was then I knew that I had to find a way to escape the kids’ table and make it to the nirvanic world known as The Table – where Jimmy and the adults ate and pulled each others’ fingers.

The kids’ table at our house was a red-legged folding table with a flimsy tabletop that resembled a pegboard without any holes. I never understood why the wildest of all beasts were put at the weakest of all tables. This year, I wouldn’t have to worry about that. I was sure that after sharing in the rite of the finger pulling that my uncle would invite me to join him at The Table. No more flimsy metal legs. No more childish conversations. No more airplane sounds as the spoon entered Eddy’s mouth. Yep – this was the year that I said niños adiós and hola adultos!

It’s ironic that the more we connect, the less we connect. We have built a technological juggernaut of interwoven personal network connections yet have lost some of the basic skills required to make these relationships meaningful. It’s the analog of knowing how to slam dunk a basketball but forgetting how to dribble.

I’m very thankful that I grew up in an era where the majority of our relationships were face-to-face. It taught me how to dribble. If I made someone feel bad, their facial expressions gave it away. When I did something nice for them, they said thank you. Our face and body were our emoticons – they were immediate and they were not optional. If I forgot to say thank you, it was noticed.